Cuckoo
by memoire
Summary: The Heart of Europe still beats under the oppressive hand of Nazi Germany. / for the APH: A Brief History of Time event on tumblr
1. I Open My Bill

**On the nature of the characters' human names:**

 **For Czechia: Kristýna is the derivative of the English form "Christina," meaning follower of Christ. Her last name Vaněk, feminine form Vaňková, means "greater glory."**

 **For Slovakia: Frederik means "ruler" or more specifically "peaceful ruler." His last name, Procházka, means "stroll."**

* * *

 _15 November, 1939_

The window creaked against the cold autumn wind. A slight draft invaded the library, where students normally gathered together to stress about exams in silent solidarity, among the rows of ancient books depicting heroic figures in history. All of them hoped that one day they'll be remembered: as a sentence, as a footnote, as a memory.

At the moment, however, the library was not a quiet sanctum; it was a bustling auditorium as they prepared a protest against the parasite. Nevertheless, the library's intent was preserved amongst all the noise, a stronghold for knowledge and the protector of ideas. Here, the students decided, was when they'll reinvent the future because no one would do it for them. They came from all grades and majors, united at the notion of freeing their dear country from occupation. There were about a thousand in total, a few dozen of whom gathered at the library for temporary shelter as they waited for the procession.

On the second floor, two twenty-year-olds occupied a quiet corner. One of them, a boisterous man with aspirations in law, and the other, an exhausted woman who dreamed of becoming an astronomer.

"Do you think it'll go well," asked Frederik Procházka, propping his feet upon the table while precariously balancing himself on his chair. Brown hair swept over his eyes and over a head bandage, an unwarranted medallion from a scuffle with a German officer. "The last time it happened, it caused _this_ ," he waved his hand theatrically at the congregation below, "to pass."

The question was directed at his companion, Kristýna Vaňková. She toyed with a red ribbon in her left hand; soon she would have to use it to tie her hair in a bun. Her fingers were callused after long hours besides a lamp, gripping a pencil as she wrote down equations. "I have confidence that this one will work out better. The Germans _need_ us…"

She let the statement trail off, knowing what exactly the Germans could do. It was, unfortunately, the only thing they knew confidently, which bothered Kristýna to no end. Frederik merely shrugged in response and turned his attention back towards the window.

Outside, their classmates huddled in tight groups. Soon, they will amass into a larger one for the funeral procession of Jan Opletal, a medical student who was shot and killed last month during Independence Day. Neither Kristýna nor Frederik knew him well, but both respected his actions to the point where they were willing to finish what he started.

Behind them were bare trees spread sparsely on the green. Some of them still bore the vestiges of birds' nest. Perhaps a few still had eggs. Perhaps nothing will disturb the peaceful robins. The word "perhaps" embodied all of humanity's uncertainties and all of humanity's futures.

"You know if things go horribly wrong, follow the plan," Kristýna said.

She stood up and began tying her hair up, as it helped her concentrate on the situation at hand. She always had a plan. It assured her that there was always a way out, always a light to guide her when darkness suddenly falls.

"And what if the plan goes horribly wrong?" responded Frederik, giving her a sideways glance.

Something inside Kristýna twitched at the notion of one of her plans going _wrong._ They had a high success rate and on the small chance one failed, review, revise and plan again. But this wasn't a trajectory problem where she had all night and the next morning; this was a demonstration that always had the present in mind. She couldn't erase the problem and start over again.

She jabbed her thumb at Frederik as a retort. "Then it's your job to improvise. Now, get up. Do you hear the voices?"

Frederik sighed, a hint of pessimism lingering in his breath as he stood up. He had doubts on this succeeding but he had a trick: by not worrying about it. Such has been his philosophy for the past decade. Kristýna told him to change it, in fear of him being too zealous, but today was not that day.

He was a lawyer by studies. He would waltz in the classroom wearing a rumpled button-down that he forgot to iron and trousers that were haphazardly put on as he raced across the school for his debate that he read the night before. Frederik never worried about anything, as worrying meant more stress, and more stress meant more likely to make mistakes in his rhetoric. This method so far had an impeccable track record.

Kristýna pushed in her chair and together, they started walking towards the stairs to join the river of other students pouring out of the library. They didn't brandish posters but planned to brandish their voices. Frederik was naturally loud. Kristýna had the capability to be loud when the situation called for it.

Now, Frederik could yell unrestrained and Kristýna had a reason.

They marched out of the library and integrated themselves in the crowd. They would go wherever Jan's intentions led them, and that would be the heart of Prague.

The black hearse lead them through the sprawling city. Some of the windows were lighted as evening fell but barely any of them were inhabited as their residents poured onto the streets to observe. Some of them were the parents of the students in the procession and they could hear faint but excited _Ahoj matko! Ahoj otče!_

Neither of their parents knew they were on the streets. Though Kristýna's mother probably had an inkling that her daughter was among the throb of people, Frederik's parents would never think that their dear son would partake in political responsibility.

Of course, it's not like his parents would know of the protest anyway, though they probably had an idea. Frederik was sure that him and his family was fine. All of the Procházkas could talk their way out of anything. Whether that ability would be affected by the recent crackdown on Jews is a different matter; he loved learning about new things, but this is the one subject he would abstain from.

The procession came to a brief halt at the train station where they assumed his body would be sent to his home town in Moravia. Everything became quieter, until only snatches of whispering remained. A cold wind blew through the area. Kristýna contracted her body further into her overcoat and Frederik, noticing this, took his scarf and wrapped it around her.

"You really should have dressed warmer if we were going to be out here this long," he said.

"I am wearing two coats and a long-sleeved sweater," she fumed, although the faintest traces of a grin were present on her lips. She tilted her head up and straightened her back so that their eyes met. "I don't think I could be any warmer if I could." She resumed her stoic silence but she tugged his scarf a little closer to her, where the cloth barely brushed her exposed face.

Frederik's cheeks were red, but whether it was from the cold or a warm happiness, he did not know. He always loved it when she smiled, genuinely smiled. But he was not sure whether he loved _her._ They have been friends for so long now that it was virtually impossible to imagine themselves as anything but.

Still, there were moments where Frederik did feel for Kristýna. It happened during spontaneous moments: when they spent long nights studying for their exams, when they sent furtive glances at one another across a room, when they basked in the sun during the warmer months, when she listened to his proposals about some dusty court case. He wasn't sure if Kristýna felt those moments as well.

In fact, she too grappled with her emotions. The scarf smelled faintly of old paper and coffee. Under her focused expression, a hurricane of possibilities swirled within her mind.

She was well aware of Frederik's moments, how he would smile brighter when she was there and how he always made her feel radiant after an abysmal day. Kristýna considered herself a free-spirited woman, so she would make him chase her, until they were both tired and collapsed into each other's arms.

The both of them knew, however, it would be a long time until that happened.

The procession marched on. Even though Jan's body was no longer here, his spirit lived on in the heart of his fellow students. The procession transformed into one of reverence to one of protest as bursts of yelling erupted through the crowd. Suddenly, the peaceful, winding river transformed into one of ferocity, whipped up from the incoming storm.

Where is my home, where is my homeland,

Water roars across the meadows,

Pinewoods rustle among crags,

The garden is glorious with spring blossom,

Paradise on earth it is to see.

And this is that beautiful land,

The Czech land, my home,

The Czech land, my home!

 _Where My Home Is._ The national anthem of Czechia rang loud and clear like a church bell tolling. Their hearts were trapped in their lungs and the only way to relieve the pressure was to sing.

As the procession reached Charles Square, they came in contact with the police and quickly scattered into the open doors of the nearby Technical University. Kristýna grabbed Frederik by the hand and dragged him under an arch, squished uncomfortably with the other throb of students. Kristýna's lungs were squashed under the weight of people's heavy winter coats and her brain wanted to explode with the force of her classmates' nervous chatter. Meanwhile, Frederik and his lanky figure had no problem with the predicament.

"What do you think is going to happen?" he said, echoing the concerns of others. "…Do you think we should leave?"

"Is that supposed to be a rhetorical question?"

Frederik stood on his toes and moved his head left and right, trying to search for an exit. "I'm just concerned for our safety, that is all."

"Wait. Let's see what happens next and then we'll decide. If you see anything up there, tell me. "

Anything, so far, did not exist. Frederik became frustrated and claustrophobic being surrounded by so many people in such tight quarters. He was used to wildly gesturing his arms in an open room. Kristýna did not mind the restless, though static atmosphere; she was used to working in cramped conditions, building mock rockets and boats in the small basement under her house.

And then the parade broke through the wall of uncertainty. Something triggered something amidst a background of nothing. The phenomenon of quantum tunneling was happening before her very eyes.

Besides her, Frederik seemed to have caught this new life. He shouted at the top of his lungs: _Down with the Nazis!_

The crowd surged forward and out they went, nearly getting trampled by the ecstatic students knowing that they were doing something for the cause. It marched and marched, all around Prague, until they were tired and the day had ended. All the students drifted towards their homes in a dream, the coming nightmare far behind their vision.

"I'll see you tomorrow, okay?" said Kristýna. She unwrapped the scarf from her neck, admittedly with a tinge of regret as soon as the cold touched her bare skin.

Frederik took back his scarf and wrapped it around his own. Now it was tinged with her scent: a delicate lavender. He nodded. "You will."

And with those words, both of them entered their houses and shut themselves away from the world, succumbing to a nap, and leaving their school work for the morning.

 _17 November 1939_

Morning dawned upon Prague. The alarms of students who had morning classes all rang before eight o'clock, but it was the matter of actually throwing the warm covers off and having the effort to walk to the bathroom.

Neither Kristýna nor Frederik were morning people and would rather stay under the comforting night. The difference between them, however, laid in their work ethics. Kristýna's awakening was marked with a grudging moan as she stumbled from her bed, turning off the alarm, and doing her normal routine before brewing herself a cup of coffee and walking to the university. A few houses down, Frederik mumbled "five more minutes" three times before blindly slamming his palm down on the clock, rushing his clothes and hygiene, and stuffing papers in his bag, before dashing out the front door. Sometimes he would be on time, and sometimes not.

In whichever case, they would not be seeing each other until later. The most they ever see of each other are fleeting glances in the hallways and of course, during the free period.

Two days had passed since Jan Opletal's funeral procession. Yesterday passed by with no complaints or remarks. Everyone resumed classes and hustled and bustled and had no reason to panic besides upcoming tests.

But those two days were merely part of the eye of the storm. The second part had yet to come.

They sat near their usual spot in the library. Frederik munched on a sandwich, where the crumbs laid on the folds of his shirt. Kristýna had already ate lunch, since it was against the rules to eat in the library, and instead occupied herself with a physics problem.

"Make sure you clean up, afterwards," she mumbled.

"Of course. Of course. I'm not a heathen." He dabbed a napkin on his mouth and put it on the table, only for it to fall down on the floor with a single sweep of his arm.

Kristýna wrinkled her nose in disgust, but still kept writing. "You're twenty goddamn years old. Pick up after your own mess."

"I was going to pick it up myself. Calm down." As he bent down, Frederik peaked at the work that she was doing. Adjacent to the Greek letters and swirly symbols, he saw a paragraph or two next to a numbered step. "Is that for Silvie?"

She lifted her head up, dazedly smiling. "Yeah. In class today, we were learning about integrals in three-dimensional space."

Frederik resisted the urge to release an affectionate sigh. "And yet, you're doing homework at school?"

"We've been through this conversation a million times already, but I guess you don't quite understand proactivity considering that your debate is tomorrow. Go check out a book on tax evasion laws."

"Ah… perhaps later." He shrugged. "I have plenty of time." In fact, seventeen hours was enough to prepare his defense.

Kristýna sighed and continued her work. _Now since there are three integrals, you can integrate x, y, or z first. Though, I prefer to do them in alphabetical order…_. Frederik closed his eyes and put his head down on the table, wanting a quick nap before jumping into the second half of the day.

Five minutes did not passed before his head jolted up, woken up into a dreamy stupor from a door slam. Annoyed, he put his head down again, but was once again woken up, this time by a jarring tug on his shirt.

"Look," Kristýna said., her voice lowering by several octaves, "they're Nazis."

At once, he roused from his seat, and his suspicions came true. There _were_ repercussions to their actions from two days ago.

Both of them bolted from their seats, with Kristýna leading the way. Unfortunately, her plan did not become obsolete.

It hurt her to stuff the papers into her bag and not place them neatly in their folders. Wordlessly, she jabbed her chin to the next flight of stairs and Frederik followed suit.

As they ascended to the third floor, they peered downstairs and saw with abject horror people getting apprehended. The students fled, heading towards windows in vain or upstairs to the second floor -

 _Bang!_

"God bless them," thought Kristýna. There was no time to stop, not even to flinch. "I'll see you guys soon."

He didn't want to say goodbye, because goodbye would mean the end. Everything follows the First Law of Thermodynamics: energy can neither be created nor destroyed; it is merely changed. She liked to think that it also applied to the human soul. She'll see them again, in one form or another.

Frederik had no such qualms. He knew where they were headed. They will either meet their end in flame or in ice. He was a cynic in this regard - that he will end up in the same place as them. There was no possible way that his Jewish ancestry could be hidden indefinitely.

They exited through the fire escape and down the stairs - but she did not plan on someone getting there before her. Her first instinct was to run, but a soldier yanked her away from escape.

"What are you doing? Let go of me! Frederik? Frederik!"

Unfortunately, Frederik was in the same predicament as she was. "Hey, hey! How about we talk about this for a sec-"

He never got the chance to finish that sentence before one of the soldiers punched him square in the face, leaving an ugly bruise on his cheeks and the wind knocked out of him. He reeled back from the impact and felt something fall down his cheek. Whether it was tears or blood, he could not determine.

Kristýna screamed as soon as she saw Frederik getting hurt. In retaliation with a force unknown to her, she delivered a swift kick to her captor's private extremities, causing him to cry out with a satisfactory enough pain to release her and focus on saving Frederik. For the other soldier, she kicked him in the shin and stomped on his feet, using her short height as an advantage; Frederik also contributed by elbowing the soldier, which finally brought him down.

And then they bolted from the scene, heading deeper into New Town for neither of them wanted their family to be involved in this. They knew the city like the back of their hands. The streets were their veins, interconnecting and interlocking with each other, and this time, Kristýna's intuition lead her to the industrial part of Prague, where rusty warehouses dominated the area.

Behind them, they heard angry shouts, but it seemed like there were no more than two. Frederik knew a little German and based on what he heard, he shouldn't translate for Kristýna. In response, he shouted expletives in Czech and Slovak, but had to refrain himself from saying anything in Hebrew.

Kristýna skidded to a stop and they took refuge in an unlocked warehouse with a few blocks of wood, beams of rusting iron, shards of glass, tools, and rope. Thank goodness she had her hair tied up.

"I need you to help me build a device. Grab the other end of the steel beam and I'll grab the other… Ack! That's good enough. Now is there enough rope to tie it to the ceiling…? Okay there is. I think the sprinklers are enough to support the weight. Frederik! Are you fine there?"

The ceiling was only a few inches taller than Frederik; comfortable for her, cramped for him. If he was any taller, the top of his head would brush the ceiling. Nevertheless, he fastened the rope around the steel beam and around the sprinkler, with Kristýna supporting the beam from her end. When he was done, they switched sides.

"You have the upper body strength. When I give you the signal, I want you to push it through the window when I show two fingers. Do you think you can do that?"

Kristýna stared at him with smoldering eyes, absolutely convinced that this contrived plan involving a hastily constructed contraption will work at the cost of putting herself in danger and then promptly left and appeared a second later in front of the window. Neither of them had any real training in combat besides what their adrenaline told them to do, so really, he didn't have a Plan B if this doesn't work.

Frederik aligned himself with the far side of the ram and prepared himself. Meanwhile, his partner stood stoically out and apparently, was holding a glass shard in her left hand. Perhaps she did have a Plan B after all.

He was only allotted a few seconds of thinking before he spotted the two-fingered symbol and with all his might, he pushed it towards the window with marvelous success. One of the two soldiers was hit square in the face and fell down, dazed and confused, while the other skidded past but didn't maintain balance.

At the end of the confusion, Kristýna forced herself to lunge forward and stab the still-conscious soldier in the chest and found that Frederik finished the job with a blow to the head. Soon, the second soldier was knocked out.

Both of them breathed heavily as they started at the unconscious bodies. They were both alive, as evidenced by the rise-and-fall of their chests, but neither of the two students wanted to kill them.

They weren't killers; they refused to be. They wanted to keep their souls intact and didn't want to pick up the pieces when they broke if they ever will be. And so, they propped the unconscious bodies up on a nearby lamppost and thrifted through their belongings for anything incriminating; they just found a crumpled piece of paper with thousands of names and indeed, among them were written theirs. Every officer probably had the list in their pockets, but they were still compelled to burn them.

"And that is that," mumbled Frederik. He stared blankly at the scene below him, clutching the confiscated papers in his hands.

Kristýna instead closed her eyes, breathed in deeply, and fluttered them open again. "We can no longer exist."

They stared at each other a silent conversation passed, and then they walked nonchalantly away from the bodies, acting like they returned from a nice stroll, but neither of them spoke to each other as they returned to their homes.

The statues lining the Charles Bridge stood tall and proud, just as one would expect from the magnanimous saints. During the summers, they would walk on its cobblestoned ground and admired the vast view of the Vltava River. St. Ivo, St. Barbara, St. Margaret, St. Elizabeth, St. Francis of Assisi…may they watch over them.

The Procházkas' house had assimilated itself into the dull brown townhouses as the years passed, but even before, it was rather unassuming. They were preparing to move back to Slovakia. All their papers have been prepared and their tracks covered. France has fallen and Poland a memory. They were trapped on the continent, soon-to-be graveyard with no means to travel to America. If they were going to be in Europe, they will be surrounded by family.

Frederik would be staying with them for only a few months, at least until Hanukah ended. He didn't want to worry about what would happen on the journey, or when they got there, or if they'll survive or not. Really, it was much easier if he assumed everything would go right.

But Kristýna , with her ever watchful eyes, devised several back-up plans for them. Although the family appreciated the gesture, they doubted whether they were actually doing to use them or not.

She offered her palm. "I'll burn them."

"Thank you," he replied and handed the papers. He saw her regard his response with a nod but before she left, he said, "Wait!"

She turned around with one eyebrow cocked. "Yes?"

His posture slackened and his thoughts were at a lost as he wrestled with his lips to blurt out the words. Kristýna mockingly tapped her foot on the concrete, waiting for him to finish his thought.

Frederik managed to kick himself to say it. What did he have to lose? Surely, nothing could change between them if he offered her it.

He unraveled his scarf once again and raveled it around Kristýna's neck. "I don't know when I'll come back, but if I don't, please have this."

Kristýna felt her cheeks turn red and this time, she knew that it wasn't from the cold. Once again, he managed to transform her organized mind into a state of entropy. Who did he think he was, marching into her heart like this? She didn't want to openly admit that perhaps, she did love him; to her he was still the boy with the chipped tooth who always cried whenever she did better than him.

Of course, both of them forgot that there are other ways to say _I love you_ without saying "I love you" - such as giving the other a soft nod, a tight hug, and ending a conversation with "Please be careful."

Frederik doubted he will be careful. Subtlety was not his specialty but just for her, he will make a special effort.

They parted ways. He entered his house, releasing a sigh as soon as he did, said hello to his parents, and immediately succumbed to a dreamless sleep.

Meanwhile, she walked a few houses down towards her own house and quietly opened and closed the door as her mother was sleeping; with a matchbox, she lighted the fireplace and dropped the confiscated documents into the flames, watching the edges of the paper smolder and blacken. Soon, they turned into ash and Kristýna doused the fire with water and swept the ashes into a waste bin.

From this point on, Kristýna Vaňková and Frederik Procházka did not exist.

* * *

 **The date refers to International Students Day, the day where thousands of students protested occupation, causing the Nazis to shut all universities down and sending many to concentration camps.**

 **Also, the chapter titles are based on the song "Cuckoo" by Benjamin Britten (as well as the title).**


	2. I Sing Night and Day

Kristýna sipped her cold coffee in her cold room. She always wore her jacket nowadays. It was one of the few things she owned, along with a single bed, a desk with several drawers, and a chair. Continuous use caused the paint to flake and her back to ache; what a shame pain medication was a luxury. A soft orange light streamed in through the curtains.

Downstairs she heard her door creak and immediately, her head snapped up from its bent position. It could be either two things: her mother coming home or an invader. Slowly, she opened the top drawer of the desk and picked up a gun. Though she had never once in her life discharged the gun before. It was an heirloom of her father, something he had given her posthumously. Kristýna was a woman who preferred to fight with words, not with bullets. Still, that did not mean she was familiar with how one worked.

"Kristýna?" Her mother's voice echoed in the vacuous air. "I'm home."

With a sigh of relief, she put away the gun safely into the drawer and ran downstairs to kiss her mother hello.

"Hello mama. How was work?"

"Oh," she collapsed on the couch, holding the back of her hand against her forehead, "it was tiring as always. All I do is sew and sew in shades of green and now, I want to throw every one of my green garments out the window."

Kristýna lovingly patted her mother's shoulder and took the chair across from her. Like any other room in the house, the living room of their small house was sparsely furnished with only two sitting places and a table with an empty glass vase. There was a vacant fireplace where two black-and-white pictures stood forlornly on the mantle; the rest were left behind in a rubble. One of them was a family picture, where six-year-old Kristýna held her parents' arms and another was a portrait of her father, Emil Vaněk, in military livery.

They do not know where he was buried and therefore wasn't afforded the privilege of paying their respects.

"Do you want me to prepare you any tea? I think we still have a little chamomile left," said Kristýna, walking towards the kitchen.

"That would be lovely." Her mother's voice drifted through the room, ending with a loud sigh.

She prepared the kettle on the stove and stood on her toes to grab a porcelain cup from the cabinet. This particular one had swirling designs of leaves and small pink flowers on the surface. There were originally twelve cups in the set, but only three remained: one for her, one for her mother, and one for a guest. She put the teabag into the cup and leaned on the linoleum counter.

The kitchen was always scrupulously clean, partly because only two people lived in the house, partly because cleanliness was a virtue. Kristýna was responsible for the upkeep of the home once she returned home from teaching (oh, even the children knew how everything was).

The kettle whistled and she poured the steaming water to the rim of the cup. Immediately, a delicate floral fragrance filled the room, accompanied by light breathing. She peaked her head into the living room and saw that her mother was curled on the sofa, with her face pressed softly into the fabric.

Kristýna placed the cup back onto the counter and tip-toed upstairs, bringing back a large quilt blanket and wrapped it around her mother, who she knew would be sleeping for the whole night and half of tomorrow. It was Saturday today; Sunday was a day of rest.

But alas, not for her.

She quietly climbed the stairs again and grabbed a coat from her closet and Frederik's scarf. It's been one year since all universities had closed down and mayhem reverberated throughout the community. Frederik snuck away to Slovakia to visit his family earlier this month, just to let them know that he was going to be okay and was supposedly be returning today.

To her, there was no reason why he couldn't send them a letter, as it would be less harrowing and time-consuming. The man devised the most complicated way to solve a problem, sometimes, but he wouldn't be the same without it.

Kristýna locked the door behind her and emerged under the darkening skies. She had the characteristics of a young woman who grew up too fast; disillusioned eyes, a body riveted with memories, and a mind too tumultuous for its space. She carried a satchel that only contained several pens and pencils and a book she saved from a fire.

She turned her head left and right before heading off into the night. Her head was always tilted towards the sky, not only as a sign of confidence, but as a sign of hope to see if the answers to all the world's problems were embedded in the stars.

It was a just silly thought. How could gaseous, screaming balls of light say or write anything useful?

They did. They told her to continue shining, even against a cold and vacuous environment – and shine she did.

Kristýna reached a closed, unmarked warehouse. The time was seven o'clock in the evening and the sun had already gone down, replaced by impenetrable clouds and the smell of ozone. She flitted like a bird among a cluster of tree branches; hopping from one street to the other, avoiding eye contact with any lookouts. They were ominously dressed in black, blending into the surroundings. Flashlights were a rarity these days, so she had accustomed her ears to hearing footsteps on cracked concrete.

She swung around a corner to reach an alley with bits of trash littering the floor. She squatted on the ground, careful to keep the hem of her dress clean, and ran her hands on the doors of a metal cellar until she felt a small indentation. Once she found it, she opened the door with a key and descended the stairs, closing the door behind her.

A smell of mildew always lingered in the atmosphere because of the lack of ventilation, and the heat escalated to almost-intolerable heights in the summer, but this was the best that they could do.

At the end of the stairs, there was another door, locked from the inside. Kristýna knocked on its surface, three times with three seconds in between.

"…Password?"

"Bašta," she said.

The door swung open to revealed a cramped room, only furnished with four chairs, a table with unfinished works and papers, and a blackboard with scribbles of numbers and Greek letters and shapes on it, flanked by two file cabinets. Two of the chairs were occupied by her former classmates, Silvie and Tomáš, who were also twins. The last chair was a bonus.

"How's life, Kristýna?" Tomáš said, locking the door behind him.

Being twins, he shared many features with his sister such as a splash of freckles on the bridge of their nose and permanently startled eyes. He returned back to dismantling his own work.

She shrugged off her jacket and neatly folded it on the table before she answered. "As normal as it could ever be. She redirected her attention to Silvie. "Any progress?"

Silvie precariously held up half-a-barrel of a sniper rifle, sleek and shiny. "A bit. The inside is still needs to be smoothed out and I still need to start on the stock…"

"Once I'm done, if you're finished already, I'll help with the rest of the parts."

The other girl smiled, showing the little gap between her teeth. It made her look several years younger than she actually was. "Thanks for always helping me with my problems."

"Oh, and does she have many problems," Tomáš said.

"Shut up! No one asked you."

The room erupted into laughter and descended into muted sounds of productivity. She assumed her spot at the table and resumed her latest project: a Ballester-Molina. It was nearly complete after hours of tempering metal by a fire with steel-wool gloves and tediously constructing a symmetrical barrel. She had designed the blueprint herself after taking apart an empty model.

It would have been much easier if they chose a few weapons to furbish out of scrap metal but it would be a boring process, doing the same thing over and over again as if she worked at a factory. After the termination of all universities, she was forced to find other activities to occupy her time. There was no way she was going to do nothing and there was no way she was going to work in a factory. They combined two of her pet-peeves: indolence and monotony.

Similar projects laid scattered on the table as well. Completed ones were safely stored in a crevice under the floorboards.

Here, in this stuffy small room, was where they created the tools for revolution. They were commissioned by the _Ústřední Vedení Odboje Domácího_ , otherwise known as the Central Leadership of Home Resistance, the organization that wrests its home back from the invader. It was completely voluntary, but working as a teacher, a factory worker, and a shoe-shiner did not encourage the application of the knowledge they have garnered over the years.

Revolution isn't born, it is made. None of them would ever think that they would end up in a cramped, poorly-insulated bunker furnishing weapons for something they initially had no heart in. Revolution is a gun; it is only activated when someone pushes the trigger.

* * *

Outside the city limits, Frederik slowly meandered his way towards Prague wearing too- big clothes. He considered himself a tall man, but horribly skinny everywhere. His mother tried fattening him with her delicious latkes, but alas, his energy conquered the calories and her efforts were unfortunately thwarted.

It's been too long since he'd seen his father, his mother, and his two younger siblings. They stayed indoors, for the most part, conversing with the rest of the extended family. He left in late November, and it was now the middle of December. Hanukah had just passed, but it was a solemn celebration. They lit a candelabra for each day and their mother made latkas but that was it. In a better time, they would have received gifts.

The air crackled with invisible electricity. Frederik's heart waltzed through New Town, and across the Charles Bridge where his second home resided. He had arranged to share an apartment with five other people who reluctantly worked at a printing place spreading Nazi propaganda among the populace, but concurrently, all of them were authors on the _V boy,_ under pseudonyms of course. He hoped that they were all faring well.

It was by this organization who was able to briefly visit his family under the assistance of Mrs. Bernášková. He could've written them a letter, but he had no guarantee that they would have received it. Besides, there were certain emotions words cannot express: nostalgia for lazy Sunday mornings reading to your siblings, attempting to bake _trdelník_ with your mother and failing to create a perfect circle, having a night-time conversation with your father about the future.

All of the Procházkas were good with words, but none of them knew how to express the bond they felt with each other; he felt the same way towards Kristýna. Whether that was any indication about future relations, he had no clue.

In his pocket, several forged documents were neatly folded, giving no indication of his Jewish heritage. His name was Ivo Červeny, and the reason for being outside Prague was that he was visiting his aunt in a nearby town. The situation sounded plausible in his head. Then again, everything sounded better in his head and it was the matter of transforming the ridiculous words into logic when they escaped his mouth - but he preferred life with surprises; some things were better steeped in ignorance.

Night had almost fallen. Purple streaked across the orange sky, under pink clouds, as if they had been painted. The sun will soon be replaced by numerous versions of itself.

Frederik smiled fondly. Kristýna should be heading towards her headquarters by now. He suspected that he will not return to intersect, but he will be punctual enough to catch her on the way home. Still, that he had no confirmation whether she was alive from the two months. Ideally, she would be, or else he wouldn't know what to do with himself.

Indeed, they have been together since they were children, when the bulk of the Procházkas lived in Prague. His memory played like a scene from the yellowing-page of a fairy tale; it had been so long and so ingrained that he should know in the end, they will get married and have children and live their twilight years on a porch looking out onto the countryside. Frederik liked to believe in fairy tales but as his story unfurled, he began to doubt.

At this thought, Frederik gave himself a light slap on the cheek. There were only two answers to this question: definitely and maybe.

He kept a consistent beat throughout his journey. Any sprinting or skipping would raise alarms, though he doubts he could anyway in this weather; he heard running in the rain would stain his clothes anymore, and the last thing he wanted was to ruin the clothes that his mother so lovingly stitched for him. That, and a part of him hoped to see Kristýna on the way; he wondered if she thought of him as much as he thought of her. To this question there can only be one answer: perhaps.

By now, clouds have completed coalesced into a storm and the first droplets of rain began to form. He flourished open an umbrella and continued his furtive journey towards Prague.

Frederik's heartbeat escalated faster upon passing the University of Prague. It was only a few months since all high academic institutions closed. It was only a few months since thousands of his classmates screamed on the streets as the Nazis grabbed their arms and their hair and sent them to concentration camps and nine of them were executed…

He found himself stopping in front of the green roofed building, with its rectangular windows and terraces. The green grass has since grown wild and brown, ugly from months of neglect. As grey clouds passed over the sky, covering the brilliant sunset, it resembled more of a prison than a school.

His eyes remained fixated on the university. On a normal winter day, students would be bustling inside, running from class to class, some eagerly paying attention, others on the verge of sleeping. They should be making mock prayers to God for their success on exams and afterwards, anxiously discuss what answers they had. Then, by eight o'clock at night, most of them would be heading home by foot, by tram, by car, eager to rest after a long day. No such sight greeted the area anymore.

Yet, despite, being evicted of an education, Frederik firmly believed that learning should not stop.

He would have to cross the Charles Bridge and hope that there weren't any sentries; if there were, he carried a gun in an inner pocket in his jacket. Generally, Frederik was against using violence as it left an unnecessary mess that could be traced towards him but that didn't stop him from attending informal lessons in target practice.

He hoped that he wouldn't use one in the near future, but he lived in a world where even God has abandoned all hope.

* * *

The time on Kristýna's watch read 2:00 AM. She covered her mouth from a yawn and cracked her knuckles. There was no specific time when she left as it was contingent on how much she accomplished that day but the average was 1:30 AM, with a standard deviation of two. She was the first one to leave this time, thus she bode farewell to her companions and drifted her way into the night.

Unfortunately, as she approached the Charles Bridge, she felt her body suddenly jerked backwards, forcing her to land against a rough, taut surface. _Oh no._

She twisted her neck around to find the stern glare of a German soldier staring at her. Kristýna knew that fighting was futile. Not only was he taller and probably stronger than he was, but he also had a weapon ready by his side. Instead, she plastered the nicest smile she could muster and waited for him to speak.

"What are you doing here late at night? A woman of your age shouldn't be wandering in the dark alone."

"I'm sorry," she said in a measured tone. "I was visiting someone and I didn't realize what time was it."

"And who were you visiting?"

"She was visiting me!"

Both of them swung their attention to a jogging figure emerging from the rain. Kristýna blinked several times in rapid succession to make sure that her eyes were not deceiving her. The figure finally caught up to them and gave a formal salute.

"Excuse me, officer…," he glanced at the name tag, "Ernst." Frederik coughed immediately as to excuse his terrible German. He tilted his head in reverence and extended a hand out to him. "I'm very sorry for the inconvenience but this lovely lady is my girlfriend and she forgot something at my house." From his bag he brought out a covered pan and handed it to her.

As soon as the last word left his mouth, a furious red bloomed on his cheeks. Kristýna gave no conspicuous indication of Frederik's impulsiveness, but her chest seized under her jacket and her grip tightened on his "gift." She felt Ernst loosen his grip on her but she and Frederik had to speak their lines carefully. She knew she would, as for Frederik, well, it was his fault that they had to act like this in the first place.

"Can I see your papers?" Ernst said. He seemed to be a rather young man, probably not much older than they were.

Frederik smiled again. "Of course! But first, do you mind moving to a drier place? I wouldn't want any of us catching a cold."

Otto nodded and they took refuge under an awning of a café. He released his hold on Kristýna, but his right hand maneuvered to his side, where a gun was kept snugly in its holster.

Kristýna gave the pan back to Frederik and flourished a neatly-organized file and presented it to Ernst. "I'm sure you'll find everything in order," she said, in equally bad German as Frederik.

He snatched the file from her hands and rifted through it, his eyes scanning it with impressive alacrity; only muddled by the thought he was merely seeing the words instead of reading it. She hoped it was the latter.

Meanwhile, Frederik rifled through his bag's contents for his own papers. He delicately placed his mother's foodstuffs on the driest parts of the asphalt, on top of his spare clothes, but the same could not be said about his law books and hygiene utensils. Out of the corner of her eye, Kristýna released a soft, exasperated sigh. When will he learn?

She turned her attention towards Ernst, who placed her papers back in the file. "My apologies, Miss Stárek. Are you finished Mr…"

Frederik shot up from his squatting position, triumphantly waving a crumpled mess of documents. "Červeny. Ivo Červeny."

"…Right." Ernst gave him a brief, perplexed look before focusing on Frederik's papers.

They had two aliases, one for residency in Prague and one that lead to nowhere. They used the former one in this situation and the other for more complicated situations.

Outside, the rain grew into a crescendo, as if an orchestra started to wildly beat at their percussion instruments and blew in their woodwinds. Neither of them looked at each other, but their fingers were outstretched, flexing as a stress reflex for something to hold on to. They were playing the part of the couple; it would've been a normal sight. But they didn't. Kristýna's fingers curled against her palms. Frederik's fingers, instead, stretched outwards.

She couldn't say she missed him terribly much; days working as a teacher and nights working as a weapons technician occupied most of her time. Her breaks were sparse, small patches of oasis amidst a desert. There she would sleep, dreaming of better times before the reality of the present manifested at her bedside.

What she didn't want to admit, however, was that every day when Frederik was gone, she would wrap his scarf around her neck no matter the weather and no matter the situation. Otherwise she did not realize he was on the other side of the country.

"It seems that everything is fine. You are free to leave. _Heil Hitler._ "

Frederik's smile twitched. Kristýna hid her hands behind her back, so Ernst wouldn't see them balled up into fists.

" _Heil Hitler,_ " they both said.

Ernst gave them a courteous nod and went off his way, whistling an unnamed tune. He thought those two were very amiable; truly examples of ideal people. What a shame they knew middling German.

As soon as Ernst left his vision, Frederik's mouth recoiled in disgust and spat out a gob of spit in the direction he was walking in.

"Don't do that," chided Kristýna. She glanced briefly behind. "Someone might be watching."

"Well, if they're watching, then I will fight them," he grumbled. He then turned towards her. "I'm just glad to see you again."

Kristýna grabbed the umbrella leaning from the wall of the café and stepped out into the cold rain, slyly grinning. "I'll walk with you to your apartment."

"What a lady you are."

They made idle chatter as they crossed the Charles Bridge. For a few minutes, it felt like they were students again walking home from night classes. They would open the door and be greeted with the comforting scent of brewing tea and smiles from their family.

They reached their shared section of the city. Since a few months ago, locations have shifted. Kristýna's house was first when they left school but now it was Frederik's house that came first.

"Do you want the umbrella with you," he asked her. "It's raining."

"Oh. It's fine. I like the rain."

"Really? Whenever it's raining, you always have an umbrella."

Kristýna laughed softly. "My mom would never let me outside with nothing to protect myself! Even if I am out of eyesight, I still walk under the umbrella. But here, my mother is not watching, so I am free to do whatever I want."

"Ah. Okay."

A brief silence passed between them.

Kristýna started to turn her body away from him, starting with a small wave with her hand. "Goodnight, Frederik. I'll see you soon."

"Goodnight, Kristýna."

He waved goodbye but she slunk back into the misty rain. He could faintly make out her waltzing figure, moving like flower petals in the wind.

It was a good thing she left as soon as she did, or else he would've said he loved her.

* * *

 **This is a continuation of the first chapter, so no major historical events happen in this.**


	3. I Change My Tune

_4 June, 1942_

Curls of cigarette smoke drifted through the cramped, windowless room. There were a handful of people, four in total, staring and listening intently at the radio ceremoniously placed at the center of the table.

Above them, the ceiling creaked and groaned as a myriad of feet stomping and chairs shuffling. Someone was playing a quiet melody on the violin.

They all held something in their hands: empty glass bottles, the charring end of a cigarette, the edge of the table, their own hands, or someone else's. They all held onto them with a firm grip, afraid that if they'll let go, everything around them will fall apart; their entire world depended on this moment, on hearing what came out of that speaker.

The radio was their leader. No self-respecting Czech or Slovakian would ever willingly follow the puppet government's orders. Somewhere in England, František Moravec transmitted intelligence for ÚVOD. They had an idea of what happened outside of Czechoslovakia, about the grand plays staged at the grand theatres. In fact, some of their own had hopped on a clandestine plane towards England to stage the biggest act yet on their own little theatre.

"When do you think the old man will send us the news?"

"If he doesn't by this evening, then we could assume that Heydrich is still alive and that our comrades are either dead or captured. I hope for their sake and their families' sake that it is the former."

The radio crackled and all of them simultaneously leaned in to hear. It was their angel, who delivered messages from a higher power that they have yet to see; it delivered messages shrouded in fire, telling them _do not fear_ regardless of the incoming tragedy or miracle. What message did it have for them this time?

 _Heydrich is dead._

Dawn rose on their faces; hard lines dissipated into soft curves. Suppressed joy replaced rampant despair. They had won this battle.

Immediately, clinks of beer rang out through the room as the revolutionaries drank to their cause. For the first time in years, a true ray of hope shined upon Czechoslovakia. For a brief hour, they reviled in their ecstasy, evident in their peals of laughter and merriment.

Silvie and Tomáš poured out fizzling beer in glasses for all four of them, but no one drank a sip. The act was more ceremonial than anything else. They would save the alcohol for something bigger than this.

Tomáš slammed his fist on the table, cackling. "Maybe there's hope for us after all! Forget the French or the Poles! All eyes should be on us, for doing the impossible."

"Don't get too excited," Silvie said, with a warm but nervous smile. "We still have a long way to go before we're free. Let's head home and tell our parents. It'll be the first good news they have heard in a while. Kristýna , Frederik, would you like to join us?"

Frederik pointed to himself, with one eyebrow raised. To be honest, he didn't know the twins too well. He wouldn't have come to this meeting if it weren't for Kristýna. "Are you sure?"

"That would be a yes," interjected Kristýna, standing up. She sent a glare to her perplexed companion. "It's been a long time since I've been over to the Vrabecs. Not since me and Silvie had to build that boat in physics!"

Tomáš nodded. He tapped the end of his cigarette. "Ah, I remember. Yours sank while mine ended up floating."

"Oh, shut up." Silvie whacked him behind his head.

"Ow!"

"Anyway," Silvie continued, putting on her sweater with a smug smile, "We should go."

The four of them left the basement, smiling when they saw their comrades reveling in the good news, and swung open to feel the fresh Spring breeze run through their hair. And so they walked, with Kristýna, Tomáš, and Silvie walking together with Frederik trailing a few meters behind with his hands stuffed in his pocket. The three of them kept waving and flicking their hands dramatically, discussing bygone memories from the school days.

Frederik wondered where his law-scholar friends went after the dissolution of the universities. Sure, the people he lived with shared the same interests as him but they were all different ages; they had all graduated from the University of Prague. Ideally, his classmates managed to flee the country, possibly from the continent… a part of him wanted to believe most of them did - but every part of him knew what actually happened to them.

They passed the dead-end alley where they manufactured the weapons. Kristýna craned her head to take a peek at it out of instinct and then returned her attention back to the conversation.

"Do you think we'll be able to use those at some point?" she said.

" _Those_? You mean the guns?" Tomáš answered.

"Yes."

"Well, we're only the workers. Our job is to make them and it's up to our comrades to use them." He shrugged. "But I guess it couldn't hurt to learn some marksmanship."

Silvie laughed. "Perhaps -"

Her laugh was cut short with a cry, a sharp, tinny sound like wind whistling through the trees. None of them heard the fire but all of them saw Silvie fall backwards and land with a dull thud with a pool of blood around her head like the halo of a damned angel.

Silence.

They should have, could have, moved. Why did they? The weight of mourning fell too heavily on their shoulders and then Tomáš fell.

It was just the two of them now.

"Kristýna!" Frederik cried. He grabbed her hand and dragged her towards the alley way.

She did not respond to her name, but rather stared numbly out of the crevasse of light. Her hair had fallen out of its bun in the chaos, the ribbon cast away somewhere on the street. It didn't matter anyway; she didn't have a plan.

"Kristýna," Frederik said again, "the keys?"

His thoughts were a constant battle between _go_ and _stop._ They went too fast, or didn't move at all, and he struggled to spit out the words he so desperately wanted to say.

The two of them locked eyes for a second but there was a disconnect. Frederik assumed that she was just too shell-shocked to open the door. That was not the case.

"In my bag," she finally said. She threw it at Frederik and began sprinting out of the alley. "Stay here!"

Frederik didn't even muster a response before he snatched her wrist and held it tightly.

"What the _hell_ are you doing?" He whispered with narrowed eyes.

Kristýna met his gaze with fervent eyes and a tone as sharp as a knight's sword. " _I'm trying to be a hero."_

"You can be a hero without being a martyr. You don't have to burn yourself at the stake."

"But _they_ do?"

"We can't all be burned at the stake or else there'll be no heroes to save the day."

She flinched at his words and she shook her head. Since when had she let herself be controlled be irrational thoughts? No one comes out of a war alive, but she was determined to clutch certain parts of herself that she deemed wholly hers so as not to completely die.

Frederik's eyes softened once he realized that she would take the sensible route. The situation, as tragic as it might be, was funny in a way that their roles have been reversed. He was the messy one, in emotions, in personality, in action. It was usually Kristýna who cleaned up after his mess. He wanted to laugh but could not bring himself to.

This was not a retreat.

They opened and locked the cellar door and descended down the steps and entered the small room that now seemed immeasurably big.

They pressed their backs on the brick wall and onto the door. Nothing could be heard outside, but neither of them wanted to see what was happening. All that they could see were the bleeding bodies of Silvie and Tomáš, their last smiles, and the twisted grief on their parents faces. They thought it wouldn't bother them, after witnessing and recovering from the carnage on the university's campus three years ago.

But this was different. It was more personal; they didn't just share a classroom with them, they shared a purpose, they shared a dream – and both of those concepts have been ripped from under their feet and they fell and fell until their souls can no longer be seen…

Neither of them could say how long they stood there. It might have been five minutes. It might have been five hours. But slowly, their heartbeats descended to where their memories died down and all they could hear and see was the room and their breathing.

"Do… do you think we should see what's going on?" said Frederik. He crept over to the other side of the room, behind the blackboard, and crouched down, dislodging several loose floorboards, hauling out a hefty box.

It was a rhetorical question. The Nazis were brutes, but even they wouldn't create overt acts of terrorism without a reason and considering nothing of interest happened until Heydrich's assassination… it could only be assumed that the Nazis were trading the death of one child of the Reich for many of the oppressed.

Kristýna joined him and pushed the other end of the box onto the surface. "We're going to have to, anyway. It is for the parents' sake that they must have a proper burial." She swallowed her fear as she unlocked the box with a key.

Although they thought of the twins' parents, neither of them had theirs on their mind. What would Mrs. Vaňková do, if she had to find her daughter among the thousands of dead bodies? What would Mr. and Mrs. Procházka do, if another one of their family members was lost to a variant of the Holocaust? What, what, indeed? Hopefully, those questions will remain unanswered.

Inside the box, there were twenty guns furbished over the course of the past few months. Pistols. Rifles. Snipers. There was enough inventory to cover most of the local resistance but across the city – certainly not enough. Kristýna held the responsibility of being the only weapons technician in operation in Old Town Prague.

They both took a pistol for themselves and some adjoining ammunition before going down the narrow hallway and cracking open the cellar doors. Did they have a clue on how to fire them? Vaguely. Like mice darting to escape the claws of a hawk, they precariously hid in the shadows and kept their ears tuned to the environment.

In the distance, they heard the terrified screaming of their neighbors. Somewhere along that road, were the bodies of Silvie's and Tomáš's bodies; it was practically suicide to try and recover them. But Frederik didn't worry about the future, he concerned himself with the present, and was therefore was oblivious to the disastrous consequences. As for Kristýna, well, adrenaline was one hell of a drug.

An unspoken plan formulated between them. They peaked their heads from the shadow of the alley, turning their heads left and right, and madly dashed towards their bodies. Kristýna hefted Silvie's body over her shoulder, trying to ignore the slight wet spot spreading on her side. Frederik carried Tomáš's body as if he was a sacrifice, using his hands to support the back and legs. Their deaths would not be in vain; stagnant grief had to be suspended in favor of dynamic action.

Frederik was almost close to the safe shadows and he leaned Tomáš on the wall, with Kristýna following a couple of meters away straggling as fast as she could. It seemed like they were in the clear – _seemed._

A bullet scraped the skin of Kristýna's right cheek and flew past Frederik, though he did not notice anything because she didn't let a noise escape from her mouth. Though, it was clear that no amount of subtlety can save them now.

Kristýna instinctively whipped her head back, to see who did it. She knew she didn't have to; but she was the kind of person who had to see it to believe it – and there, a dozen meters away were a group of four soldiers walking in front of a car and –

\- that was the last thing she saw before her right eye collapsed into a bloody, congealed mess of tissue. The pain was surmountable to a star going supernova. A searing pain jolted through her eye and down her spine, causing her to scream and recoil in pain and collapse onto the ground with tears gushing down her cheeks. She didn't want to Frederik to see her like this, so ungraceful and chaotic. She'd rather die than live like that…

But one thing was for sure, she would not go down without a fight. In the second before she lost nerve, Kristýna pulled the trigger and let loose a bullet, having no idea if it would hit its target or not. In any case, she would be helping Frederik when she wouldn't be able to. He better live to appreciate it.

As soon as her voice rang out, Frederik ran back to her aid. Another gunshot sounded and it buried himself below his ribcage, but luckily, at least, he did not think it hit any vital organs. That didn't matter, however, as he dropped Tomáš's body onto the floor and dived towards Kristýna. A bullet grazed his arm but he managed to drag her to safety.

Kristýna coughed. She clenched the loose fabric of his shirt and pulled him towards her. She may be in pain but God be damned if she didn't say this to him before she lost all consciousness.

"Listen, I want you to recover Silvie's body."

Five million thoughts raced through Frederik's mind. Recover the body? What about the thousands of other citizens who didn't receive a proper burial, rotting under a few feet of dirt miles away from their town, separated from their friends and family? What did it matter if one more person received an unnamed grave? Even if they made it out alive, they could not guarantee that the twins' bodies will be buried… At the moment, Kristýna's life mattered more. If she lived, then she would contribute more than a corpse.

But he still found himself dashing from the alley, dragging Silvie's body and placing it next to Tomáš's. At the moment, he couldn't tell you why he did. Under the falling daylight, his eyes barely perceived Kristýna's breathing. There was a superficial wound on her right cheek, but the real issue laid in her right eye.

He couldn't use any of his clothes to rip off a bandage since they were dirty, and so he rifled through his own belonging's as well as Kristýna's to find a suitable substitute. At the bottom of his own bag, there were napkins.

As gently as he could, he pressed the napkins onto her eye as a way to suppress the bleeding, ignoring the little gasp from Kristýna. They could not be loud; sooner or later someone will find the bodies and if they were especially unlucky, somebody would find them.

He fumbled for the keys to the cellar and opened the doors, carrying Kristýna bridal style down the steps into the room. He only went down here once, and that was when it was newly inaugurated as the Old Town Prague's weapons center; on another day, he would have to admire it more closely.

"Do – do you know how to patch me up?" Kristýna said hoarsely. She no longer felt any pain but felt something worse than that. She felt a vacuum where her right eye should be.

"…No," he responded, lowering his gaze. He took off his jacket and put it on the floor so Kristýna's head could rest, and placed her bag on the table.

"Then I'll tell you." She pointed to a wooden drawer on the left wall. "There should be some medical equipment over there. Use a scalpel to cut off some skin on my upper thigh and use that to cover it."

Frederik was half-way across the room before he froze and looked at her with apprehension. "I'm sorry but you want me to do what?"

"Did you learn nothing in anatomy freshman year? Trust me on this. _I know._ "

"But that would mean -"

"I know what it would mean, but at the moment, physical pain means nothing to me." Kristýna gritted her teeth. She had to endure this. "I, we, made it this far. A little cut won't bother me."

He stared at her, unblinkingly, before grabbing the medical kit from the drawer and kneeling besides her in a split second. He grabbed a roll of gauze from the kit, along with the scalpel, and offered it to her. "Do you want this to bite down?"

"Of course. Just put it in my mouth. You can hold down my legs if you want. I'm ready."

She breathed in deeply. She trusted Frederik to make this as fast as possible, but what a shame they didn't have any alcohol in the room or else she would've downed the whole bottle. In retrospect, maybe she should've accepted the beer jug back in the basement of the tavern. Maybe then she wouldn't be in so much pain.

This has been the only time his fingers have cooperated. "You're going to be all right, Kristýna. You're going to be all right."

He gritted his teeth and made a small incision on her leg. At the same time, Kristýna clenched harder on the gauze.

Frederik dug the tip of the scalpel into her skin, and Kristýna's body still remained motionless. Perhaps this wouldn't be as bad as he thought, but he failed to notice the first pinpricks of tears in her eyes. It wasn't like he could say he would've fared better.

He cut out a three centimeter square of flesh, turning his gaze away from the bloody flap, as he gently stuffed it into the cavity. He had no idea whether she was going to get a prosthetic eye, like the soldiers in the First World War. At least she still had more than half her face intact.

"I'm done," he said, wiping his hands on his clothes. "How do you feel?"

In truth, she wanted to cry but her pride prevented her from doing so. Never before had she cried in front of anyone. Not even to her mother. Not even to her father. And certainly not to Frederik.

"I feel fine. Thank you for all your help." With a groan, she sat up, resting her head on her knees. It was going to be some time before she is used to being half-blind. Such is life, she supposed. "I'm… just very tired."

Frederik stumbled over to a chair and leaned back upon it. "Oh, I know. I understand."

She laid back on the ground again, clasping her hands together over her waist. "Do you know what time it is?"

"No idea. Probably too early to get up. I'll be here with you if you want to sleep."

"Thank you."

Kristýna turned on her side and brought her knees close to her chest. In the dark morning, it should be safe enough to carry Silvie's and Tomáš's bodies to a nearby field and give them a proper burial, depending on how much time and luck fate allotted them. If not, then their bodies will be gently carried away by the River Vltava, where they will know nothing but an endless dream.

Many times, she had thought about how her death will play out. Will the cold grasp of winter seizing her soul as she sleeps? Or will licks of flame burn her first? She would like the former to happen; as it would be much easier for her mother to accept. Her mother could not, would not, and should not lose another one to fire. As much as she liked to plan, she cannot plan out her own death. It was a natural process, free from man's influence.

In contrast, Frederik preferred the latter form of death. If he should die, let it be that his lungs are filled with smoke and his eyes filled with tears. It should be fitting that he should die this way. As of the moment, he escaped from _the_ Holocaust, but has yet to escape from this one.

He pushed the chair a little farther from the table, craning his neck towards Kristýna. Her eyes were closed, and her lips were parted. He would imagine that her breaths would come out as little puffs of air. He remembered the day where she calculated the approximate angle that would be needed so that he would fall down. Her reasoning?

 _If you're going to do stupid things, I would like you to not hurt yourself in the process._

A small smile graced his tired features. Frederik leaned towards the table, stopping when all four legs of the chair were planted on the floor, and dramatically threw off his winter jacket off of himself and placed it over Kristýna. Tomorrow was going to be a long day.

And with that, he went back to the seat and dozed off to sleep.

 _28 May, 1942_

The time was 2:00 in the morning. The sun would rise in another three more hours. Frederik was the one who woke up first, surprisingly. His body clock woke him up a few minutes after two, making him deliberate whether he should get up now or press snooze on his internal alarm clock for five minutes. But he knew himself better than that; five more minutes meant five more hours, and so he lifted his head from the desk, cracked his neck to relieve his neck pain, and stumbled over to his bag while blinking out the sleep from his eyes.

He checked whether Kristýna was still asleep or not so that he can change. She was, but he scrounged the effort to change quickly just in case she woke up earlier than expected. It was weird being the one to wake up first; even on the weekends when their body clocks tried to catch up on lost sleep, Kristýna was first. He would have to be the alarm clock.

Gently, he nudged her shoulder and whispered: "C'mon. Wake up."

"I'll be up in a minute." Kristýna's eyelid stayed shut. Really, she could afford that, can't she? Their classrooms were only a short distance away and besides, Silvie was -

Silvie was dead and so was Tomáš.

The thought was enough for her to snap her eye open and put her back on her feet. Frederik shifted away to give her some room to stretch; Kristýna was now aware about how horrible she looked. Even though Frederik was in the same condition as her, with bloodshot eyes, unkempt hair, and day-old bloodied clothing. She felt disgusting and sad and bitter.

Frederik, noticing her that body and mind were drenched in sadness (and who wouldn't be, after witnessing such an event?). In a single step, he closed the distance between them and embraced her in a tight hug. Neither of them were willing to let go. Their arms around each other acted as anchors. And after what felt like an eternity, they let go.

"Time relieves all wounds," he said. "Just think of it this way: they don't have to live with a burden."

"For once you're right, and they wouldn't want us to dawdle around grieving."

"No, they wouldn't want us doing that," he affirmed.

To be fair, he was not particularly close to Silvie nor Tomáš. Kristýna constantly helped Silvie with her homework, though he had an inkling that there was much more to Silvie's intention than that. As for Tomáš, well, he only saw him in brief intervals. But it Kristýna remembered them as fine people, than he was going to as well.

"Then," Kristýna continued, "I want you to wrap up their bodies while I go back to town and inform their parents."

"What?" Frederik flinched, stepping back a little. He wasn't so appalled at handling corpses than the thought of her going alone at this hour. It would be like that moment in 1939, when she was nearly captured for being out alone…

Her mouth was set in a firm line and she started to tie her hair up. "Yes. You heard me. Wrap up their bodies to the best of your ability. There should be some spare cloth around here from my mother's factory." An image of a worried Mrs. Vaňková popped up in Kristýna's mind, but she quickly dismissed it. "Some pins should be around here too… Once you're done, you can find me at this address."

She wrote it down on a piece of paper and gave it to Frederik. The Vrabec's house was not too far from here. It was going to be a walk, but not a terrible walk. He could get in some much needed cardio as well.

"I should be done when the sun rises, and then it should be a conspicuous enough time to wander the city. The Vrabecs have a car, so we can use that to transport their bodies to their final resting place. Any questions?"

"…How do you plan on hiding your eye?"

"Ah! That!" She straightened her back in realization. He was right. Although the time crunch was not horribly serious, she should be heading over to the Vrabecs soon if they wanted this matter to be cleared up and then later, she would have to run over to her own house and ask for some cloth and string…

For now, she would have to loosen some hair strands from her tie and arrange them in front of her missing eye. "Is this good enough?"

"Perhaps from a distance," affirmed Frederik. He squeezed her hand, suppressing the thought that she looked a bit cuter with her hair in even more of a state of disarray. "Be careful out there. You've already lost something, and I don't want to see you lose another part of yourself."

Kristýna smiled. "Thank you for your concern. I'll try my best to be careful and I'll see you soon."

And with that, there was only one person in the room.

* * *

Now, there were six people in total: two friends, two parents, and two corpses wrapped in linen placed in a cremator.

Kristýna and Frederik were allowed to say their final words to Silvie and Tomáš.

"Thank you for all the memories," was all she said, but her voice nearly broke with the weight. "May your ashes ascend to the sky and become parts of stars."

Frederik did not share as many memories with them, but he didn't want to say nothing. Instead, he recited a few lines a poem:

"We thank with brief thanksgiving

Whatever gods may be

That no life lives for ever;

That dead men rise up never;

That even the weariest river

Winds somewhere safe to sea."

They stepped aside for Mr. and Mrs. Vrabec to say their last words and put their hands on their children for one last time. They said their final goodbyes, and the metal door closed with a clang. To ashes, their bodies returned to, and to the sea they will be scattered.

* * *

 **This chapter is based on the assassination of Heydrich, a prolific and cruel Nazi official. It was the only successful assassination during World War II.**

 **Wish I could've granted Silvie and Tomáš more screentime because they were, imo, underdeveloped. but alas, i had a deadline.**


	4. Far Far, I Fly

_30 April, 1945_

Kristýna and Frederik knew one thing for certain - _they will be victorious._

Prague's soul restlessly thrashed in its chains. It heard the call of its Allies from across the continent, and they are saying that the war is won. The people know it too,

They were now twenty-six years old. Today was a warm Monday. Sunlight streamed in through the window of Frederik's apartment, a room at the end of the last hallway on the highest floor. He laid on his small bed, one hand supporting his neck and the other supporting the spine of an open book, _The Trial_ by Franz Kafka _._ Kristýna sat cross-legged on the floor, tinkering with a dismantled radio.

"Are you finished yet?" he said, tilting his head away from the book. "It's been like, what? Two days now?"

Her neck straightened and she looked him in the eye, mirth sparkling. "Does it look like I'm done? Do you know how hard it is to solder wires without a constant source of heat?"

"No, because I'm not an engineer."

"Exactly. But I'll be finished in within the hour, assuming this blowtorch cooperates with me."

With that comment, they both returned to their own devices. Three years ago, they had quit their day jobs and committed all of their time to the resistance.

Frederik wasn't really reading _The Trial,_ though its pages were frayed from constant use and yellowed with age. Between pages, there were small inserts of records detailing the amount of books ÚVOD had in its archives. Although not an official job by any means, Frederik saved as many books as he could from being burned. The spectacles had since decreased in a linear fashion, which was a great improvement from an exponential curve, but he'd rather have a flat line originating at zero.

At the very last page, he taped a ring that his parents gave to him all those years ago. He initially did not read about it, but on one quiet summer night, he decided to read the book and found that most of the weight originated from the back. There, a plain silver ring encrusted with a single diamond was taped. His parents did not leave a message but it rang clear in his mind.

It seems that the dream will come true. Before the radio broke, news arrived that the Russians were plowing down through Eastern Europe and the Americans wrestled their way through Western Europe. Czechoslovakia was the bridge connecting these two halves together. It was a matter of which ally would reach them first, but they weren't going to let either steal the show from under their feet. They were the stars here, and their allies were the supporting cast.

Earlier, Karl Frank announced that they will drown the city in a "sea of blood" if any uprising occurred. Well, they haven't directly used that threat before but at this point, the people were experienced sailors in navigating through this sea of blood. The people streamed into the street as if they were coming to watch a parade. For the first time in years, the city pulsed and its blood started circulating again. Prague was revitalized for a little while, before the streets were cleared. It was just the introduction, however. The finale would come soon.

Kristýna tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear before picking it up with her hands and inspecting it. It was a lovely device, really, despite its age and rusting parts. She did her best to polish the metal with a stainless steel scouring sponge, but when you're a ten year old radio who endured several drops from great heights, it was hard to return to your glory days.

She turned the dial to the right frequency and heard the familiar sound of static. No major news today, or at least for the moment. According to their comrades, nothing noteworthy happened in the week in time the circuits fried and gathering the materials to fix the radio. For once, fortune seemed to smile upon them.

Satisfied with her handiwork, Kristýna placed the radio on the window sill, and leaned on the wall besides it. Living with one eye was not horribly bad; her right ear had compensated for the vision. When she returned home on that morning, her mother did not register at first.

She had opened the door, quietly as it had ever been, and found her mother sitting on the sofa embroidering. Her mother had not noticed the arrival of her daughter. There was no use in hiding, so Kristýna announced her presence.

"Mother! I am home."

Her mother turned around and smiled. "Good evening. How was work? Do you want me to -?" The mother's voice faltered and ceased. She stared at Kristýna, lips slightly parted. The embroidery hoop fell softly on her lap and the needles clattered to the floor.

She smiled sadly. "Forgive me. I did not mean to come home like this."

The mother simply turned around and bowed her head, her soul on the verge of breaking. "Forgive me too, for not being able to protect you." She did not ask how or why it happened, though she had an idea; Kristýna looked like her mother, but inherited the spirit of her father. She could only hope that she would not meet the same fate as he did.

Since that incident, Kristýna rarely returned home. In part because she did not want to trouble her mother any longer, and in part of being much too busy to return home at all. She did her where she was staying though,

Frederik had suppressed the memory of his family. He heard about the near-extinction of Jews in Slovakia, and he did not want to think about whether he did not hear from his family because of the terrible postal service or because they were dead and if they were dead, whether or not they still remembered him as their darling, oldest son who wouldn't do anything wrong.

Nevertheless, despite these qualms, they went on their business, subconsciously wondering when everything between them and their family would return back to normal. Just like how it used to be in their golden years.

"I hear static. I guess that means you fixed it?" said Frederik. He laid the book page-side down on the nightstand and sat upright on the metal bedframe.

"Hold on. Let me switch to another channel." Kristýna turned the dial again to one of the music channels; static, static, a broken violin, discordant trumpets, and then a whole piano playing in symphony with the other instruments. She beamed. "I suppose that means that I fixed it."

He jumped to his feet and extended an arm. He too, smiled, and was very happy for her. "Well, may I have this dance to celebrate your feat?"

She did a mock curtsy. "You may."

They took each other's arms and lazily danced in circles around the tiny room, stepping on each other's feet. But they didn't care. Kristýna noticed that his hands were quite warm. She attributed it to a simple transfer of heat… but she had a feeling it was something more. No - not a feeling. It was a fact. Frederik was an idiot, but he knew exactly what he was doing, even if it was based on emotions. She never liked how he did things spontaneously; and hate was a strong word for that pet-peeve. However, there were times where his spontaneity saved their lives.

…Perhaps it was time she let him catch her.

Out of all the decisions Frederik has made so far, asking Kristýna for a dance was by far one the best. Neither of them had any real dancing experience. Their hands worked fast, nimble enough to twirl pencils around and scribble down the next sentence within a second but their feet were another story entirely. He thought it was better this way - the both of them stumbling around on creaky floorboards instead of moving elegantly on a marble floor. It was more real, as if one part of his future plan came true.

He lifted his arm as a gesture for Kristýna to twirl - and twirl she did, spiraling her feet around like a tornado. If she was wearing a dress, the hem would billow out like gas in a supernova explosion. What a nice image it was…

The daydream was interrupted as his head was suddenly thrown backward as Kristýna leaned into him, her familiar callused hands supporting his neck and the crook of his back. Since when did she get so strong to hold him like this? Since when did the petite, delicate Kristýna learn how to do this? He's read plenty of novels stored in the vast archives of the school library, where they describe a kiss. There were hundreds, thousands of descriptions of couples kissing each other but none of them matched this moment.

It was not light, nor was it harsh. Their lips brushed against each other, and then they gently moved. Kristýna dropped let her hands fall slack and he fell onto the bed, with her falling on top of him. They shared an intimate moment, staring at each other's wide-pupiled eyes before continuing the kiss and -

And they were interrupted once again with the blare of sirens. They only had time to share a wistful glance before diving back into the action; the dream was broken, and moments like these are only temporary. They knew that.

They slunk back into their routine, the heat slowly dissipating between the vast distance between them. Now that the radio was fixed, Kristýna tried working on other projects but cannot bring herself to move her hands. Frederik picked up a pencil and placed the tip on the last piece of paper, but like her, he could not find the motivation to continue working.

Yes, they may be only twenty-six, but their bodies felt like they were sixty, and their hearts felt like they were sixteen. This decade was a terrible one to live in. Time beat upon their bodies like a relentless storm, as they are forced to be on their feet and stand their ground against the wind, in the meanwhile trying to catch snatches of their childhood as it tattered away from them.

Sitting on the ground, essentially doing nothing, made them restless. Kristýna decided to head towards the door.

"Where are you going?" Frederik said.

"I'm just going to walk around for a bit. The room is a bit stuffy, don't you think?"

"Do you want me to go with you? It's quite dangerous outside."

"I'll be fine. It will only be a little while."

"If you insist."

She closed the door behind her, went down the stairs, and exited the building. The noon-day sun beat violently upon her face. It was days like these where the eyepatch came in handy; she had grown out her bangs and parted them to the right side so as to cover it. Aesthetically, Kristýna couldn't say that she hated the eye patch but she rather have a working eye.

Kristýna stopped once she arrived in the middle of the Charles Bridge. Many people roamed its ancient cobblestones, but no one paid any attention to her. In all technicalities, she wasn't lying to Frederik when she said she was only going out for a walk.

From her bag, she brought out an unmarked white box and a lighter. Deftly, she slid a cigarette out and lit it, leaving both of the items on the edge. She took one long drag and tapped the edge of it so that she saw the ashes spiral down into the calm water of the River Vltava. Oh, she didn't like smoking but drowning her sorrows out in alcohol was a risky move and she did not have enough anger to foolishly clash into brawls. Besides, she found that she lost control of herself whenever alcohol was involved.

Frederik doesn't like smoking either, but he did not know about these little breaks. He respected her boundaries too much to follow her around, and Kristýna regarded his boundaries the same way. People always saw them together, but they each had their own lives and it happened that their lives fit nicely into each other.

She released another puff of smoke, watching it curl into the atmosphere. The tobacco was terrible for her lungs, but she liked to imagine it as expelling her demons. Watching the smoke billow out was more therapeutic than confessing to a priest. God cannot help her now.

While Kristýna was out, Frederik was suddenly struck with a spur of inspiration. Having no paper, however, he resorted to using the blank pages of _The Trial_ for his thoughts. He decided that he was not going to write everything, for that would be rather silly if happened to return safe and sound. It would serve as a time capsule, to whoever will discover it first. If he lived to see the next year, then he would add more, but if not, then the soul who finds it will know exactly what happened on April 30, 1945.

With a sigh, he tucked his pen back into his jacket, closed the book, and laid on the bed once again, covering his eyes with the back of his hand. He should really do something, maybe go out on a walk, but writing that was emotionally draining. He laid there for fifteen minutes, unthinking and unfeeling, and then a memory suddenly bubbled from a dusty corner of his mind.

He remembered a day, with a weather all too similar to this one. It was Easter morning in the year 1923, otherwise known as any other day to the Procházka family. Their neighbors, however, celebrated the holiday with lots of balloons, cake, and joyful prayers. Being four at the time, he didn't quite understand what was happening and when he asked his parents, they simply responded with that it was a Christian holiday, just like with Hanukah. There were three distinct things that he remembered from 1923: the weather, the question, and the request.

Frederik was sitting outside, curiously observing the small party that had gathered around the doorstep of the Vaněk's house. Everyone appeared as the picturesque image of revelry: ladies smiling in their elegant dresses and gentlemen wearing flowers on their lapels. From here, he could hear the idle chatter of relatives and their hearty laughter filling in the absence of many months.

"Frederik!"

His attention snapped back to reality and he tilted his head up to see Kristýna staring at him. "What do you want?" he said.

"I was just going to ask if you want to join, but since you were so rude to me, I think your answer is going to be no."

He jumped to his feet, eyebrows scrunched in apology. "No, no. I was just thinking that's all. But why would you want me to join?"

"You looked so lonely! Let's go!" She grabbed his hand and dragged him towards the festivities, and then suddenly stopped. "Oh, and my parents asked if your parents want to join in as well."

Frederik's eyes widened. "Really?"

"Of course. We're friends!"

The boy smiled. "Okay then I'll be right back!" He ran back inside his house and yelled at the top of his lungs "Mom! Dad! Jozef! Matthew! Kristýna wants us to join!" - and in a flash he returned at her side.

"Where are we going," he asked.

"To a tea party! The table is over there."

The two children meandered through the crowd of adults, their skin brushing against the long, soft skirts of women. Though, it was nothing compared to the softness of Kristýna's skin.

The table was all dressed up in white cloth, lace, and twelve dainty teacups painted with flowers all spaced out evenly on the circumference. A few children were already there and they welcomed him with smiles and laughter. Frederik has not seen them recently; were they alive? Were they dead? If they are dead, then they will live on in this bittersweet memory.

Beyond that event, he could not remember and the memory receded back to its spot in the filing cabinet. He wished for everyone to smile like that. He wished that nobody would be sad ever again.

…Oh God. Since when did he get so sentimental?

But - that smile earlier when Kristýna fixed the radio - he loved her even more when she smiled like that, when the stars could finally be seen under the curtain of darkness.

As if on cue, the girl herself opened the door. She felt a bit better after her little stroll; her heart became lighter, ready to endure whatever life threw at her and was greeted with the sight of Frederik smiling at nothing.

She kicked one of the legs of the bed, startling him out of his daydream. "Hey! What are you smiling at?"

"Oh, I was thinking when all of this is over, I was thinking we could host a celebration of some kind with our families and the remaining members of ÚVOD. It would be nice you know, just like old times but with a welcomed twist."

At the statement, she dropped her miffed demeanor and exchanged it for a gentler one. She sat on the bed as well, so close to Frederik that they can smell each other's signature scents: lavender mixed with coffee. She tried grasping his reference. Was he referencing a specific time? Or in general? "That would be nice, actually. Let's do it then."

The spring sun slowly dwindled into a violet twilight. The day has been quiet, one of the more quiet ones in their time. Today passed like a slow summer evening where time turned into honey flowing into the golden light. In another world, they would be laying out in a field watching the sky change colors before their very eyes and pushing each other on a makeshift swing. It wouldn't happen once or twice but countless times; and they would whisper in their heads _I'll never get used to this._

That moment has not happened yet but still, they could never ever get used to each other or the lives. Their weary bodies were so full of life, aching for a better future where they could be everything they ever wanted. Getting used to a moment would be stagnant; their lives at equilibrium. Neither of them wanted to ever get used to this.


	5. Away I Must

_6 May, 1945_

"It's just six o'clock." What was that supposed to mean? They leaned in closer to the radio, as if that would help them understand. Then, a few minutes later - "Calling all Czechs! Come to our aid immediately! Calling all Czechs!"

And with a single sentence, the city was set on fire.

They grabbed their guns and their hearts and ran into the streets, heading straight towards the radio tower.

Frederik's laughter contained traces of mania. "I think this is going to be one of our finest hours."

"As much as I'd like to think that this will go well," said Kristýna in between breaths, her hair about to become undone with the sheer alacrity of her movements, "if this will be _one_ of our finest hours, then let us hope that it is not our last."

They arrived to the scene, surrounded by a host of their comrades trying to break through the SS barricade. People on both sides scrambled to dodge incoming bullets but it was always the resistance who would budge first. Their allies were like debris, thrown up into the air like an object colliding with the ground. Their weapons were inferior, for what could small, hand-made guns do against the mighty roar of a machine gun? But it was the only ones they could manage to get with such limited supplies.

Still, Kristýna and the rest of the mechanical engineers did their best and they had made their mark on resistance history. Their purpose has been fulfilled to the highest extent.

Despite being out-gunned, they were not out-manned and relentlessly pursued the Nazis; the pride of lions eagerly hunt the flock of eagles who have been terrorizing them for the past decade. It was a spectacle of brute force.

Frederik jumped into the vanguard of the front while Kristýna flitted around the edges, keeping an eye out for any enemy reinforcements. In the time it took the resistance to storm the radio building and force the Nazis into the basement and courtyard, none came.

The event had lasted eleven hours. The time was 17:30. The soldiers have surrendered and are now considered non-threatening. The dead and the wounded are out on the streets and their families, if they had any, are being updated on their status. It was an hour of hope. It was an hour of despair. It was an hour that followed all victories.

Now, where was Frederik? She hadn't seen him since he ran off in the fray and she was too exasperated to catch up to him. At the moment, two opinions resided in her head. One of them told her to explicitly look for him while she was carrying the wounded back to a makeshift clinic, since it was her duty as a close friend. The other told her to focus on her job and eventually, Frederik will turn up.

If Frederick died in the midst of battle, then she would not blame herself but him for being so brash. If Frederick died of wounds sustained after the battle, then she would blame herself.

Kristýna reached a compromise with the two opinions. She would continue her assigned duty but if she heard Frederick's cries or spotted him first, she would personally deliver him to the infirmary. It was going to be rather hard being limited to half-a-field of vision, but her hearing has never failed her.

She considered asking her partner for help, another girl a few years younger than her whose face was covered with ash, but decided that it would be a bit too weird. Whenever Kristýna came across Frederik (she had to stifle herself from adding _body_ right after), she would try to "casually" point over where he was. Being casual was doubtful, however, as her actions have been nothing but overt except that one time six years ago when she was nearly arrested for suspicious actions.

Oh, dear. Six years already? Suddenly, her shoulders drooped and her face grew sullen with the weight of the past.

"Hey, are you okay?" her partner asked. "You look… sad."

They had reached the midway point between the infirmary and the field. Both of their hands held on tightly to the rods of the stretcher.

"Yeah I'm fine. Don't worry about it."

The girl frowned. "You keep glancing forward like you're searching for something."

"You are right," Kristýna sighed. "I'll find him though. I'll always find him."

She merely tilted her head, in confusion and concern, but decided to drop it with a simple "okay."

The two continued on their job, searching for survivors among the finished chaos comforting them with detached worry. It was a terrible thing to be detached to the consequences of war but it made fighting it easier. Once you have traveled past threshold of care, then you could do anything.

Kristýna knew that Frederik have long since passed that threshold and that gave her much anxiety. If his name ever went down in history, she would be sure that adjacent to the word "reckless" in the dictionary," she would find a picture of him. The word was the blamed for the cause of her father's death as well. If only he had stayed in the trench rather than go over the top - at least that's what her mother keeps telling her.

If she could feel even more sullen, her eyes could not bear the weight any longer and they would've cried. How many months has it been since she last saw her? Six? Seven? Eight? Time flies by so quickly. After this part of the battle was over, she decided that she would visit her. Give her some comfort that her daughter is still alive. It was the least that she could do.

A groan interrupted her thoughts.

"There!" her companion said, pointing in a northwesterly direction.

They hustled over. The soldier looked like he was in his late 30s, but the grey hairs in his beard made him look older. There were two bullet wounds in his chest, both of which were covered by his hands. Kristýna took his legs while the other took his head and they tried their best to gently lift him up on the stretcher. It never went well.

This routine continued for a few more bodies, after lifting dozens upon dozens, they were allowed a break. Thank God that they were not ordered to take care of the dead or to deliver the grim message to their family - if they had any left.

Kristýna decided to seize this time to finally visit her mother, whose house she had to get through by once again carefully traversing the former battleground.

She gave small nods of acknowledgement of those still working and went her away, until she arrived to the very edge and heard a feeble, but familiar voice calling her name.

 _The sight of her without him now became unfathomable._

Their relationship seemed to defy all the known laws of universe. It is known that all compounds can decompose, but it seems that _theirs_ did not undergo any sort of decay. Theirs was something stronger than iron and it was utterly _unnatural_ that they had stayed together this long - but they were gratefully ineffable.

That is why Kristýna immediately turned back and delayed the visit to her mother, for a little while at least. She was sure that she would be fine. Her mother was not active in politics and lived in a quiet house on a quiet street. Mrs. Vaňková was safe but Frederik was not.

She found him lying on his side, with a shallow wound on his right cheek and his hand over another. Once Frederik caught sight of her and was sure that she could see him, he forced an apologetic grin and pulled his left arm out from under him, presenting a daisy to his dear saving angel.

"Please accept this as an apology."

Kristýna crouched down to his level, dissatisfied, and she hoisted him up to her shoulder. "In all honesty, I had low expectations for your survival. Where did you get that, anyway?"

"I snatched it out of a house's flower pot. I figured that you would feel angry once you found of him."

"You could've _died._ "

"At least I would die doing what I loved."

"I thought that was debating."

For a minute, he fell silent. Oh, debating. That was not something he had done in years. He had small arguments here and there, but nothing that amounted to presenting evidence and adrenaline running through his veins. Resisting was a kind of lawyering, except the words are in your blood and you are always the defendant, fighting against the prosecutor who accused you of civil unrest and all of their evidence was created by them.

He had used this reasoning in the beginning but it had consumed him. It now occurred to him that he would love to fight for the law if it meant he would still be alive by the end of it. Both of their passions had manifested while their time in ÚVOD, but they knew that they rather be applying it in other situations. It was accurate, but not precise enough for their tastes.

Well, now six years into the war, Frederik had another reason to live.

At last, they reached the infirmary, where Kristýna patched him as best as he could. She suppressed a knowing smile when she applied rubbing alcohol to both of his wounds. Frederik knew better.

Kristýna snatched the daisy from his hand and delicately put it in her pocket. If she should put in in her hair, it would've fallen off. "I think I should visit my mother," she said.

"That sounds like a good idea." He paused, but did not use this moment to think of his own family. "Do you mind if I go with you?"

"I'm sure she'll be very happy to see you again."

He smiled, eyes sparkling with passion. Once the war was over, those eye would win over anyone in a courtroom. "I'm flattered that your dear mother thinks that I am a fine young gentleman."

Her mouth was posed to say something along the lines of "she does" but the corner of her eye caught a figure running towards them. It was one of their colleagues, Mr. Something or Other. There were many people enlisted in the resistance and it was tiring to remember all of their names.

"We just received orders to construct barricades," said the officer, breathless, before running off. "Come!"

Internally, they both wondered what would happen if they ran off. They just wanted some peace and quiet for an hour but war does not stop for anything. Not for the vainest of cries. Not for the crying of a child. They merely exchanged tired glances before joining the effort.

Kristýna wondered if all summons should be heeded.

 _6 May, 1945_

If one had the ability to rewind time during this era, many would assume the one will travel to late April 1889, to kill a certain dictator, but that is not what Frederik had in mind as him and Kristýna fled the scene.

It was Day 2 of the battle. The many wounded were whisked away to quieter corners of Prague, behind the barricaded walls that were constructed in the wee hours of the morning. They were assigned to patrol the border in order to alert their comrades about any infiltrators.

There were indeed infiltrators, and Frederik, trying to be heroic, decided to run away instead of heading towards safety. Kristýna, knowing that he will surely die without her, followed after him.

This would be their finest hour.

The soles of their feet felt like they never touched the ground. Instead of running, they were gliding, almost soaring as if they were little robins testing out their flight feathers without the supervision of mother. Down and down they round the alley, ignoring, or perhaps not feeling the pain in their legs. Frederik's eyes were solely focused on Kristýna, and Kristýna's eyes were solely focused on the mental map laid out in front of her.

Where could they go? Where are they safe? She was safe once before. Where was that place? Where? Where can she rest where the cuckoo bird won't find her? This is a situation that she cannot formulate a plan but she still ran and ran and ran. She wanted to appear knowledgeable, even when it was beyond practical, to the end of her days. The best that she could hope for is that their pursuers would lose interest and return back to the main event, but there were too many to outrun.

 _Let's seek a building,_ she thought. _Perhaps we can barricade ourselves in._

She swerved left and entered the Grand Hotel, a German-owned establishment, looking behind her not to see whether she was still being chased like rabbit but whether Frederik was okay or not. His grip on her hand had tightened ten-fold just like the walls of their hearts as it beat rapidly to the tune of their footsteps.

Up, up, up the stairs. Past the dumbwaiter and the laundry chute along the undefined route.

Frederik though Kristýna's plan was ingenuity at its finest. They were enclosed in a public space where anyone could be hurt and certainly the Nazis wouldn't do that towards their own people - and sure enough, reckless gunfire had been replaced by furious yelling as their pursuers were forced to split due to the hotel's tight quarters.

Kristýna scanned the hallway they just entered for any points of escape and spotted a cleaning cart a few doors down. They sprinted towards the room, frightening the maid.

"I'm very sorry, miss," she said quickly, her tongue stumbling over German, "But we need this room and the keys. Please, for your own safety, get out."

On cue, Frederik tried his best to push the maid out of the room and snatched the ring of keys from her waist, threw it into Kristýna's hands, before muttering a quick apology and shutting the door. She kneeled on the ground, thrifting through the keys for the right one while he started to push some of the room's furniture towards the door.

Time slowed down as the both of them collapsed on the floor, but Frederik got up and threw open the windows leading to a balcony. A cool breeze streamed through the room, but that was not enough to quell their fervent hearts pumping hot-blood running through the citizens' veins.

"What do we suppose we do now? What do we have?" Frederik asked, staring blankly at the barricade.

They had a future if they surrendered right now though with all the mayhem they had caused, they would get killed once the Nazis broke through the makeshift barrier. They had a past which told them not to surrender under no circumstances. They had the present, which told them to run.

None of those possibilities were feasible, so only one answer remained.

"Ourselves," said Kristýna.

They embraced and became each other's centers of universe. They were the source of all local chaos, like a ravenous black hole pulling everything around it into its singularity until there was nothing left but the hole itself. They clutched each other in fear, in ecstasy, in love.

In that moment, Frederik had one single regret: he should've taken his book with him. It could've made the end of this story much more sweeter than bittersweet.

Kristýna had one single regret as well: she didn't say goodbye to her mother. Both of her dearest people were going to die the same way. In a blaze of fire, covered by a shroud of war, with shards of their halos falling down like glass glinting in the light.

The barricade gave way.

Fire does not know about the gleam of youth, still shining with with vigour beating as fast as the flame flickers. Fire does not know about grief of millions, about the living who had lost, and the lost who are found face to face with the living. Fire does not know the promise of tomorrow. It only knows how to burn.

It was all perfectly positioned, orchestrated as Fate had already written the script. The tense stance of the soldiers, clutching their guns and feeling the pressure of the triggers on their fingers, the light shining through the window as if it was a spotlight, falling and following the two main leads as they fell over the marble railing of the balcony with nothing to hold on to each other but each other.

It is only fitting that the grand play should have a grand finale.

* * *

Mrs. Vaňková woke up from a terrible premonition instead of all the commotion. Slowly, she eased into a waking state, clutching her forehead in anxiety. The premonition faded away into the background of all the shouting and yelling from outside, but she simply did not let this one go. She gazed at the window, her greying hair falling in messy waves around her face, and knitted her eyebrows. What had she dreamed?

The woman made her way towards the kitchen, preparing herself some tea. She used the same teacup over and over again, leaving the other two victim to dust. Sipping the tea calmed down her nerves, but it could not quell her headache.

Once Mrs. Vaňková finished the last drop, she was suddenly aware of the mayhem happening outside. She tiptoed over to the window and peeked outside from the curtains.

The fighting seemed to have escalated from previous accounts. It was not organized by any means, but the numbers made it remarkably different. Chaos reigned wherever there were Nazis and Czechs and Slovaks in the same area, and that area encompassed _everywhere_ and most likely, Kristýna was out there.

Oh, that girl. The war had ignited a spark within the already burning mind of her daughter, and the same spark had been present in the mind of her husband. At least, for the majority of her life (no, she shouldn't say that. Kristýna had many more years to go), she had adopted the mother's pensive attitude but had then exchanged it for her father's spitfire…

Every morning, she prayed to God to keep her daughter safe but she was not a religious person. The house never kept any real objects of worship; they had a single cross that was kept on a dusty shelf. Now, the wooden edges have gone worn and soft, shaped by the feverish love of a distraught mother. She did not pray to _the_ God - just a higher power - to anyone who could be listening.

Mrs. Vaňková's fingers let go of the tiny scrap of lace curtain, letting it fall into place.

She could only hope that history remembers this day but she could not hope that it remembers the name of her daughter.

The mother meandered to the kitchen and picked up a well-used bag of chamomile tea and grabbed her coat from the rack, not minding all the racket outside. She's sure that after romping around today, Kristýna and her friend (Frederik, was it?) would very much appreciate a cup of tea. After all, the time for the cuckoo bird to leave is nigh.

* * *

 **This is based off of the Battle for Czech Radio and marks the end of Nazi occupation. After the battle, the Soviets liberated Czechoslovakia.**

 **And thus, ends of this story. I hope you guys enjoyed it. Until next time!**


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